Lambros Demetrios Callimahos, the world-famous virtuoso, was born in the shadow of the great pyramids of Egypt on December 16, 1910. On Gezirah, a little island in the Nile near Cairo, he first saw the light of day. Of pure Greek blood, his ancestry going back to times immemorial when Alexander the Great founded the city which bears his name, Callimahos had the racial heritages of two great civilizations. At the age of four, his parents brought him to America.

Until he entered high school at Asbury Park, New Jersey, young Lambros never dreamed of becoming a musician. His chief interests were entirely in the realm of science, especially chemistry, physics and medicine. Renouncing journalism, his father's profession, and acceding to paternal wishes, he went to Rutgers University for two years to study law, although through high school his aspiration was to enter the field of research in electrical engineering. Then, at the age of nineteen, the Muses beckoned to him and he entered the Institute of Musical Art of the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.

His musical life was one of astonishingly eccentric developments. Up till the age of fourteen, he not only evinced no musical talent whatsoever, but actually disliked music. Then, at the age of sensitivity and impressionability to beauty and ideals, he felt himself drawn to the arts. His choice of the flute was a matter of pure chance, his amazing talent for the instrument not yet having come to the surface. His start in the world of aural poetry was with a ten-cent tin whistle. From a whistle it was but a step to the flute. However, spending as he did all his leisure time in scientific experimentation he had but little left for music. The night of his graduation from high school he sat in the orchestra playing five instruments, including oboe and bassoon. Nevertheless, he had not yet come to regard music seriously. At college he played the piccolo in the band, while his classmates 'died for dear old Rutgers' on the football field.

Entering the Julliard School, he was at the foot of a class of over a dozen flute players, as his application had never been much more than that of an amateur. His teacher, Mr. Arthur Lora, recognized in young Callimahos an extraordinary talent, and under his expert guidance, Callimahos in his second year was flutistically at the head of his class. While still at school he formulated new theories in the art of flute playing, discovered several new types of stacatti and evolved other phases in the art, many of which were expounded for the first time. With the fervent ambition of youth, Callimahos pursued the goal of drawing from the instrument all its possibilities, and then occupied himself in diminishing the impossibilities. Of a mechanical turn of mind, he invented several devices in the mechanism of the flute.

After the fourth year at the Juilliard, Callimahos went to Europe for further study. His concert debut was made in Munich in the spring of 1935, on which occasion he stood forth the finished artist, an unrivaled virtuoso of the flute, thrilling the audience with his consummate mastery -- indeed, being heralded as the "Meisterfloetist". After a return engagement in Munich and in concert in Vienna, he astounded the music world that Fall by playing in Munich for the first time in history a colossal all-Bach program, consisting of the seven sonatas and his own transcription for flute and harpsichord of the B-minor Suite. By this time his fame had spread throughout all Europe, and with his phenomenal flutistic and musical gifts, coupled with a gigantic repertoire and an instinctive talent for program-building, resulted in a two-year tour of sensational recitals in England, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Greece, Latvia, Esthonia and Poland.

The technical virtuosity of Callimahos and his superb musicianship earned him the title of "foremost master of his instrument". With a repertoire which included over 75 sonatas, hardly equalled by another performer on the concert stage, Callimahos was able to show the many-sidedness of his art, and to demonstrate his mastery of the flute, whether it was in concerti with orchestra or in his dazzling performance of his own transcription of Paganini's 24th Caprice, admitted by critics to be the most difficult work ever performed on the flute. At the age of twenty-four, he was heralded as one of the world's greatest instrumental virtuosi, as representing for the flute what Casals symbolizes for the Cello and Segovia for the guitar. That same year he was appointed to a professorship as youngest member of the faculty of the Mozarteum Academy of Salzburg, Austria, where he teaches during the International Summer Courses and the Festival. (Click here for the 1937 "All Bach Concert" program at the Mozarteum).

After having been in Europe for three years and having received the highest honors the Old World could bestow upon him, he returned in April, 1937 for a brief visit to the United States to make his American debut in a recital at the Town Hall in New York City. Thereupon he went back to Salzburg, where he founded the first Master Classes ever to be given for flutists, an exhaustive course of study embracing the highest phases of the technique and the aesthetics of flute-playing. Later that Fall he made another extensive tour in Europe, and returned in January to make sensational appearances in Chicago, Boston and New York. On January 21st, 1938 Callimahos made musical history by playing a flute recital in Carnegie Hall, an occurrence extraordinary in the musical annals of New York City. The brilliancy of his success (he played nine encores on top of a full-length program!), the unbounded enthusiasm of a large audience, the high acclaim of the critics, and the convincing demonstration of his overwhelming mastery of the flute and the depths of his musicianship, are conclusive proofs that in the hands of Callimahos the flute is elevated to the rank of a concert instrument on a par with the piano and the violin. With this revolutionary innovation in the world of music, the flute is here to stay!